'Big Brother' scheme axed

A £400m scheme put forward by the chancellor, Gordon Brown, to create a new national population database dubbed a building block of the "surveillance society" was finally killed off yesterday.

The initial plans for the citizen information project won the Office of National Statistics the 2004 Big Brother award for the "most heinous government organisation" from the campaigning organisation, Privacy International.

The aim of the project, which was to go live in 2008, was to create a "master list" of everybody's name, address, date of birth, sex and a personal identifying number which could be shared across the public sector.

But Des Browne, chief secretary to the Treasury, yesterday said this should be done through the national identity card scheme instead, "on the basis that the scheme eventually becomes compulsory". The decision is expected to add £200m to the cost of the ID card scheme.